Dell Compellent Storage Center

Enterprise storage for virtualized data centers and the cloud

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Dell™ Compellent™ Storage Center with Fluid Data technology delivers an all-in-one storage array that always puts data in the right place at the right time for the right cost — and dynamically adapts to meet changing business needs.

Efficiency

Dell Compellent Storage Center is an enterprise data storage array that delivers high performance with fewer drives, power and space. In fact, with Fluid Data storage, your cost per gigabyte can actually decrease as you grow.

Storage virtualization — storage is virtualized at the drive level, creating an ultra-efficient, high-performance pool of storage shared by all servers and applications.

Thin provisioning — virtual volumes of any size are provisioned upfront, yet physical capacity is only consumed on write.

Agility

Dell Compellent Storage Center forms a solid foundation for flexible grid storage, allowing you to scale up and out with dynamic business continuity. What’s more, you can do it all without downtime or disruption.

Technology independence — mix and match the latest drive and interconnect technologies, and easily add new technologies as they become available.

Resiliency

The Dell Compellent Storage Center enables you to continuously protect data against downtime and disaster—without the need for full-volume clones, capacity pre-allocation or high-speed data links. Fully redundant hardware and advanced failover features help to ensure high availability.

Space-efficient snapshots — once an initial snapshot is taken, only incremental changes in data need to be captured, allowing you to take continuous snapshots for near-instant recovery to any point in time.

Automatic data tiering

Storage Center 6.4 Data Progression has been enhanced to support multiple tiers of SSDs, which ensures that all writes go into Tier 1, RAID 10, SLC SSDs for increased performance. Additionally, Data Progression moves read-only data to Tier 2, RAID 5, MLC SSDs to ensure cost-optimized read performance and free up Tier 1 for writes. This provides built-in, extremely granular intelligence that automatically tiers data and optimizes performance while still protecting your data. SC6.4 Data Progression dynamically moves data between SSD tiers within the flash-optimized SC220 solution and places inactive data on the high capacity HDD drives within the SC220, SC200 or the ultradense SC280 enclosures, all within a single array.

Dynamic Capacity: thin provisioning

Built into every Dell Compellent Storage Center system, thin provisioning delivers efficient storage utilization. Our advanced thin provisioning, called Dynamic Capacity, completely separates storage allocation from utilization, enabling users to allocate any size volume up front yet only consume physical capacity on write. You can even reclaim capacity that is no longer in use by applications, automatically reduce the space needed for virtual OS volumes and convert traditional volumes on existing storage to thin-provisioned capacity.

Data Progression: Automated tiered storage

Based on actual use and performance requirements, Dell Compellent Data Progression automatically classifies and migrates data to the optimum tier and RAID level. All new data is written to Tier 1, RAID 10, for the highest write performance, yet snapshots automatically move to the lowest tier and most cost-effective RAID level within 24 hours. The most active blocks of data remain on high-performance SSD, Fiber Channel or SAS drives, while inactive blocks dynamically migrate to lower-cost, high-capacity NL-SAS drives. With Data Progression, organizations can dramatically reduce ongoing costs of storage.

Data Instant Replay: Space-efficient snapshots

Dell Compellent Data Instant Replay enables organizations to take thousands of continuous snapshots to speed recovery to any point in time. Fluid Data technology doesn’t require full-volume clones — not even to provide a base snapshot. Instead, after first write an initial snapshot is taken of that write data only. Subsequently, only incremental changes in data are captured and the system uses real-time intelligence to create virtual pointers between all associated blocks. Stored on lower-cost drives to free up Tier 1 capacity, in most cases these readable/writable snapshots can be used to recover any size volume to any server in less than 10 seconds.

Remote Instant Replay: Thin replication

Dell Compellent thin replication technology, called Remote Instant Replay, leverages space-efficient snapshots between local and remote sites to deliver a cost-effective disaster recovery solution. After initial site synchronization, only incremental changes in data need to be replicated regularly, cutting hardware, bandwidth and administration costs. You can choose between replicating data over Fiber Channel or native IP connections, depending on your unique business requirements.

Live Volume: Dynamic business continuity

Dell Compellent Live Volume enables organizations to move volumes on demand between Storage Center arrays within a local storage grid. All migration occurs transparently while applications remain online. And the functionality is fully integrated into the virtualized storage platform, eliminating the need for additional hardware or server-side agents. Live Volume supports any virtualized server environment. In fact, migrated volumes automatically map to associated hosts regardless of physical location to Dell complement leading virtual machine movement engines.

Storage Center GUI: Intuitive management

Dell Compellent Storage Center features a unified, point-and-click interface that cuts administration time and eliminates the need for specialized skills. The intuitive interface automates repetitive, time-consuming tasks so data center staff can focus on other important projects. Complex allocation, configuration and administration functions are easily accomplished with wizards to guide the process. And comprehensive Support Assist capabilities deliver remote, diagnostic and monitoring tools coupled with automated alert and notification services.

Enterprise Manager: Enterprise storage management

Enterprise Manager simplifies storage resource management by providing comprehensive monitoring and management of all local and remote Dell Compellent Storage Center systems. You can gain instant visibility and control of a multi-terabyte, multilocation environment, streamlining administration and reducing operating costs. Configure and verify remote replication processes, monitor storage capacity and disk utilization in real time, and generate comprehensive storage usage and performance reports — all from a single pane of glass.

Dell offers a wide range of professional services to simplify the assessment, design, implementation, management and maintenance of your SC Series environment, including 24x7 Dell Copilot support with over 94 percent customer satisfaction.* Dell Services storage experts go beyond everyday administration to help you improve the performance and utilization of your Dell Storage Center system. The SC Series Services portfolio provides system installation and implementation as well as training. From disaster recovery planning to physical relocation, the Dell Services team is available to provide professional assistance when you need it.

On-site: Choose from priority (4/8/24-hour, depending on location) or next business day on-site* response by a certified technician.

Parts delivery: Choose from priority (4/8/24-hour, depending on location) or next business day parts delivery. UPS ground shipping also available.

Protection

For your data management and protection, Dell Copilot Support offers warranty* protection for hardware components. The Software Subscription includes perpetual software licensing for patches, updates and releases, so the only additional fees you incur are when adding new functionality or more capacity.

Through the personal assistance of a dedicated support expert, Dell Copilot Optimize can help you improve system utilization and performance with proactive reviews, health checks and evaluations. It includes proactive IT planning to ensure your Storage Center systems evolve with your changing data center requirements. Daily system performance monitoring helps ensure a highly available and optimal performing storage area network (SAN). Ongoing best practice guidance from your storage expert helps minimize diagnostic troubleshooting and reduce service calls. Should an issue arise, your support expert will work with Copilot to ensure a timely resolution.

Implement fast. Implement correctly. Implement once.

Dell ProDeploy Enteprise Suite* can reduce costs and relieve your IT department of time-consuming implementation tasks that otherwise divert valuable IT resources from business-critical activities. We bring two unmatched values to every implementation: deep knowledge of our products and broad experience from performing thousands of deployments every year, in just about every type of customer environment. You can be confident that your new SC Series storage system is installed properly, configured per the design specifications and that your data is migrated safely from your legacy storage system without disruption.

Start on the right path

Decrease downtime, improve utilization and ensure business continuity with storage training from Dell Education Services. With SC Series training from Dell, SC Series Administrators will learn to perform key administrative tasks for Storage Center and effectively manage all tools associated with Storage Center operations.

Transform your data center

Dell Storage Consulting Services can help you develop transformational strategies to meet your complex data management business needs while freeing up valuable resources, budget and time. Consulting services can help with:

Storage infrastructure consolidation within one/multiple data centers

Storage infrastructure optimization for virtual environments

Data protection process development or improvement of backup operational processes

Network Attached Storage

Beyond the multiprotocol SAN capabilities of Storage Center, Dell Compellent also extends the benefits of Fluid Data into network attached storage. Dell Compellent NAS solutions enable you to consolidate file- and block-based data onto a single unified platform designed for efficiency and scalability.

Dell Compellent’s NAS portfolio allows you to select the best architecture for your IT environment. The Dell Compellent zNAS is ideal for midsize and large organizations with pure NFS or mixed CIFS/NFS environments, while the NX3000 for Compellent is optimal in pure CIFS environments.

With Dell Compellent NAS solutions, file serving operations remain separate from application operations to avoid bottlenecks from CPU-intensive processes. Clustered configurations, hardware redundancy and the ability to add storage capacity on the fly further enhance availability, with active/ active failover and advanced multipathing (MPxIO) helping to ensure that there is no single point of failure.

Disk enclosures

Dell Compellent disk enclosures feature the latest industry-standard technology, including 6Gb SAS interconnects, so organizations can scale up and out with ease. Administrators can mix SSD, Fibre Channel, SAS and NLSAS drives in the same system as well as different speeds and capacities in the same enclosure.

Any combination of enclosures can be housed in an array to balance cost and performance. Users can change configuration on demand — adding, replacing or updating enclosures — as new technologies emerge and business needs change. Migrating data to new enclosures can be performed without disruption.

Drives

Dell Compellent drives feature the latest industry-standard innovations. Organizations can combine SSD, Fibre Channel, SAS and NLSAS drives in the same system. Administrators simply choose the drive types, capacities, form factors, transfer rates and rotational speeds that make sense for their business and application needs. Dell Compellent Data Progression software automates the movement of data among drive types in the storage pool — between tiers and RAID levels, including RAID levels within the same tier.

Dell Compellent 3.5" disk drives support 4Gb Fibre Channel and 3/6Gb SAS back-end connectivity. Also available are 2.5" 6Gb SAS drives, which deliver twice the performance, yet consume much less power than conventional 3Gb SAS drives.

With Dell Compellent Fluid Data storage, you can add disk capacity on the fly as business needs change. Also, migrating data to new drives can be performed without disruption.

Pricing, specifications, availability and terms of offers may change without notice. Prices on this page are in U.S. dollars and exclude taxes and duties. Freights will be included in final price. Dell will not be responsible for any additional charge from your credit card. Promotions can only be combined according to specific rules on each page. Promotions from different sources, such as, printed materials, newspaper, radio, TV or special programs, cannot be combined. Limit of 5 systems per customer. No entitlement for distributors/resellers. Due to security reasons for you and Dell, it necessary at delivery to show official ID of the credit card holder used in the purchase. Dell Systems with 4GB of memory may show less memory in Microsoft Windows. Windows Vista® automatically allocates a certain amount of memory for system use. The amount varies depending on the devices that are installed on the computer but is at least 1 MB and can be as such as 1 GB. Only the unallocated memory is reported by Vista.